Epic
Announces Epic China Outsourcing Division recaps a talk at the Tokyo Games
Show by Epic's Jay Wilbur in which he comments on Japan's reluctance to embrace
middleware for game development and reveals Epic Games China and plans to
shanghai some jobs to Shanghai as part of this new outsourcing division in an
effort at controlling costs:

According to Wilbur, one of the keys to
Epic's carefully managed staff size is the way that the company has outsourced
content. Epic's teams were claimed to be 50% or smaller on average than the
industry norm, with Gears Of War's average team size over its development life
listed as being just 30 developers.

Hence, Epic has initiated the setting up of the Shanghai-based division, which
is run by a team responsible for content development at high-profile studios
including Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Shanghai, reportedly including former
Ubisoft Shanghai studio head Paul Meegan. The people behind Epic China have
worked on titles in the Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, and Ghost Recon franchises,
and Wilbur indicated that Epic itself is outsourcing to Epic Games China for
low-cost, high quality game assets, but it will also be available to other
developers.

Why China for Epic, and why now? Wilbur explained that the cost per man month
(including overhead) to produce games in North America is around $9,000, and in
Europe and Japan, it's $8,500 per man month. But costs per man month in China
are less than $4,000 - hence Epic's choice to keep its core team at Epic's NC
offices, but outsource significant amounts of art creation for its
games.

But this is what kills me. Steam was said to save gamers money cause it cut out the middle man, And now they are getting their art assets 50% cheaper in the Asian Market. So what does this mean to gamers? NOTHING.

We've been paying 50 bucks for new releases for a decade if not longer. So what it means is that developers spend less on making games, which in turn gives them more money when it's released (if it sells well).

And I don't think we'll ever see games go over the 49.99-59.99 price due to the fact that people would quit buying them outright. With exception to Collectors Editions, or has some uber joystick attachment thingie.

"I've never seen a feature like this before. It warms your ass. It's wonderful" -Walter Bishop